In light of the bizarre news that the Metropolitan Police is to “investigate” comments about homosexuality made by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, we, the undersigned, Imams and representatives of various British Muslim organisations, affirm that Sir Iqbal’s views faithfully reflected mainstream Islamic teachings…The practice of homosexuality is regarded as being sinful in Islam.

Yes, and in other religions too, as Ratzinger keeps anxiously pointing out, in case we might confuse him with someone else. So what? Who cares what is regarded as sinful in Islam or any other religion?

Of course the Imams and reps are right that the police investigation is bizarre – but it comes a little oddly from them, frankly. Some of them at least.

All Britons, whether they are in favour of homosexuality or not, should be allowed to freely express their views in an atmosphere free of intimidation or bullying. We cannot claim to be a truly free and open society while we are trying to silence dissenting views.

Well, that sounds good, but let’s not forget that Iqbal Sacranie himself remarked that death was too good for Salman Rushdie. Because? Because he had freely expressed his views in a novel. After he did that, an atmosphere not free of intimidation and bullying sprang into being, thanks to Sacranie and others like him. Were they not energetically engaged in trying to silence dissenting views? Has Sacranie ever disavowed that activity? Not that I’m aware of. It was just recently that he expressed the wish that the religious hatred bill could silence dissenting views like Rushdie’s.

The most encouraging reaction to news that the police were investigating Sir Iqbal Sacranie’s foul comments about homosexuality came from gay and secular leaders. Instead of revelling in the discomfiture of the fundamentalist head of the Muslim Council of Britain, they quite properly said that they believed in freedom of speech and that included Sir Iqbal’s freedom to be prejudiced and foolish.

So we did. Okay, okay, I’m not a leader – but I did quite properly say.

As Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP, pointed out, the MCB has not returned the compliment. It’s all for freedom of speech when it comes to laying into gays. It also believes that the government has no right to ban the glorification of terrorism. When it comes to freedom of speech about religion, however, it’s a very different matter. At the height of The Satanic Verses affair in 1988, Sacranie said that ‘death was perhaps too easy’ for Salman Rushdie. This did not stop New Labour almost tripping over its feet as it rushed to embrace the MCB when it came to power in 1997. As well as knighting Sacranie, it responded to his lobbying by putting before parliament a law against incitement of religious hatred. In their attempts to keep this unelected homophobe in their big tent, New Labour is prepared to ignore its more liberal supporters – and the conclusively argued opposition of the House of Lords – and force the bill through.

So, we’ll all just have to keep on quite properly saying, over and over again. Monotonous but necessary.

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12 Responses to “Double, Triple, Quadruple Standards”

G Tingey what the hell are you doing? I linked to that article, and quoted from it, what is the point of pasting the whole thing into a comment? And even if there were a point, you can’t do that – it’s a copyright violation.

Please don’t post things I have to delete; I’ve told you before, it’s a pain: since the hacker I’ve had to work with a new database, which has a lot more steps and is a lot slower. It’s a sharp pain having to correct or delete libelous or copyright-violating posts.

Isn’t it amazing that when Tingey types Grauniad, it doesn’t come out right?

BTW: The Guardian was no worse than other nationals who update and correct throughout the night. To arrive in time, earlier editions are sent to more distant parts – being based in Manchester, The Guardian would become the morning amusement of London’s chattering classes.

“We cannot claim to be a truly free and open society while we are trying to silence dissenting views.” Surely their message here is ‘if you silence our criticism of (gay partnerships) you are censoring us (unelected unnacocountable) Male Muslems, and we therefore don’t live under free and equal conditions.” That’s sneaky passive agressive bo11cks that is.

Apart from noting that Sacranie should bear in mind that horses have quite a forceful kick, I’m seriously flabbergasted that people haven’t been falling about laughing at the whole business. Sacranie represents a religion (a belief one can choose, not something with which one is born) whose name translates as “submission,” with a lot of violent conquest in its history. Women are officially worth less than men in it, non-believers are supposed to be subservient, apostates are deserving of death and the perpetrators of all the crimes that have most shocked the western world in the last few years have claimed it as inspiration. He is forever whingeing about the above religion being victimised and does his level best to stifle any criticism of it. Then he goes and picks on – what? Homosexuality, which is not a belief, nor, to the best of my knowledge, a sexual inclination arrived at through conscious choice. In England, its practice was only decriminalised within our lifetimes. It has no history of violent conquest and I know of no attempts made to foist its practice on the heterosexual majority. You could say that what gets up Sacranie’s nose is that it doesn’t impose a gender-based limit on love.

Sacranie wants to criticise without being criticised, to have free speech while denying it to others. He wants Islam, and only Islam, to have power. I think it’s about time somebody tested this thing properly, like they did in Denmark with the cartoons. Or is that what Rowan Atkinson’s working on?